They learned that early.
And there were people everywhere. All kinds of people.
“Jubilee!” Jen yelled.
“Jubilee!” Leah yelled beside her.
The scene had turned into a nightmare. Jen pushed through a small group of people huddled close together. What if the shooter was still on the loose? What if Jubilee was kidnapped? If she was scared and the wrong person offered her a hug, she would gladly take it. Indiscriminate affection. Jubilee on the woman’s lap at the party. Jubilee clinging to the lady at church. All the times Jubilee had succumbed ran through Jen’s mind.
Please help.
She scanned the street with frantic eyes, past a row of cars as the sirens got louder behind her. Loud, scary sirens that would scare any little girl, but especially her little girl. She couldn’t bear the thought of her being afraid. She couldn’t bear it.
Please help.
Suddenly, Leah’s grip tightened.
Because suddenly, there she was.
Her daughter.
Squatting down behind a bench across the street with her hands clamped over her ears.
“Jubilee!” Jen yelled.
Somehow it got through.
Jubilee’s hands slid down the sides of her color-streaked face. Her big brown eyes found her mother’s through all that confusion. Jen’s knees buckled. She dropped to the cement, and she held up her arms, and she watched as Jubilee stood and ran straight into them. Like she had in an airport terminal over a year ago.
Their bodies collided, knocking Jen back. But she didn’t fall. She absorbed the impact as Jubilee wrapped her arms around Jen’s neck and her legs around Jen’s waist.
Jen stood to her feet and pressed her daughter against her, burying her face in Jubilee’s neck. This time, the weight of her wasn’t new. Jen was familiar with the contours of her body, the sweet, nutty smell of her skin, the coarseness of her hair.
“I’m not gonna let go,” Jen whispered into her ear. “You’re okay. I’m not gonna let go.”
“She’s over here,” Leah called.
And then Nick was with them too, wrapping his arms around them as the police began clearing everyone away.
* * *
Late-breaking news from Channel 6:
Reporter: I’m here at the Crystal Ridge Memorial Day 5K finish line, not far from where the shooting took place. As you can see by the people behind me, this has been a most shocking event. Police officers have assured us that the situation is under control. So far, the identity of the shooter isn’t being released, and it doesn’t look like any arrests have been made. Again, one person was shot and rushed to the hospital. We don’t know yet in what kind of condition, but we hope to be informed of that soon. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family. Please stay tuned for more.
Seventy-One
His blood was on her hands. No matter how frantically she scrubbed, it wouldn’t come off. It was a permanent stain.
Just like the memory…
Her eyes trained on Taylor, healthy and smiling, jogging beside Darius, both in those silly tutus. The flood of relief that came at the sight of her. And then the blast of noise, so loud Camille jumped.
There was a moment of startled confusion. And then another sharp, deafening crack.
That’s when the realization hit, and then the panic.
A gun.
Someone was shooting a gun.
Runners screamed. Volunteers scattered. The table upended. Self preservation kicked in. But not for Camille. Not for Kathleen. It wasn’t themselves they wanted to protect.
Their eyes met in a shared moment of pure, unadulterated terror.
Taylor. Austin. Bennett.
Where were Taylor and Austin and Bennett?
Camille searched the scrambling crowd through a cloud of hazy pink. She’d lost sight of Taylor. She couldn’t see Taylor. She turned toward the kids with water guns. Edison had hit the ground. He’d thrown his hands over his head. But Austin wasn’t beside him.
Where was Austin?
Then she saw them, tangled up on the edge of the grass, a familiar gun on the curb. Blood everywhere.
No. No, no, no.
No, no, no, no!
Kathleen must have seen them at the same time, because she sprinted with her. Whose blood was it? Who was bleeding? One of the boys pushed himself up. But it wasn’t her son.
It was Bennett—pale, small, shaking Bennett.
Camille dropped to her knees.
Blood was everywhere.
So much blood.
Her son’s blood.
“Somebody help!” she screamed. “Somebody call 911!”
And then she just screamed. She cradled her son’s head in her lap, and she tried to stop the blood, and she screamed and she screamed and she screamed.
“Camille?”
She turned around.
Neil was leaning inside the hospital ladies’ room.
“I can’t get it off,” she said. “It won’t come off.”
And she couldn’t breathe.
Her knees buckled just as Neil reached her.
* * *
Tamir Rice was twelve like Austin. He had the audacity to play with a pellet gun at a park, similar to the water guns the boys at the pink station were excited to play with. The police arrived and two seconds later one of the officers shot his gun.
Two seconds.
For the next four minutes, that twelve-year-old boy lay on the snow-covered ground while the man who shot him—a man who was supposed to protect him—did nothing. Tamir died the next day in a hospital like this one.
A twelve-year-old kid, gone from the world.
A twelve-year-old kid like Austin.
Anaya couldn’t wrap her mind around it as she sat in that hospital waiting room, filled with guilty relief because Darius was safe beside her. Anaya and Mama had been standing at the finish line when it happened. They’d been waiting to cheer for Darius and some of Anaya’s runners.
They didn’t hear the gunshots from where they were, not with the high school marching band between them and those two blasts.
But the panic spread like ripples in a pond.
Someone’s shooting a gun!
Somebody’s been shot!
For eight agonizing minutes, Anaya and her mother had no idea if that somebody was Darius. When they finally found him, he was sitting on the curb in his ridiculous tutu, covered in color. The ambulance had already pulled away. The police were trying to clear everybody out, including a couple of reporters. Darius was in a state of shock.
“Taylor’s brother,” he finally said. “Taylor’s little brother was shot.”
Anaya drove Mama home so she could reassure Granny, since the news was already getting out, and then she and Darius sped to the hospital while their phones blew up with text messages.
Now she was here, in the waiting room. Darius to her left. Taylor to his left. She didn’t care that they were holding hands. She was too relieved that he was next to her, whole and healthy, able to hold anyone’s hand at all.
The sliding doors whooshed open.
Marcus walked in, his eyes wide as they locked onto Anaya’s.
She stood.
They hadn’t spoken since she told him the truth about Kyle Davis. And now here he was, looking as wrecked as he looked the morning after the second anniversary of her father’s death, when he knocked on her front door and apologized.
He came toward her and wrapped her in a hug, burying his face in her neck. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
* * *
Camille clutched Neil’s hand as they sat in the crowded waiting room. Taylor and Darius. Anaya and Marcus—the young man who came to the community center to help fill bottles. Shanice and Alexis. Edison and his mother, Tamika, who kep
t squeezing Camille’s shoulders like Liz, the big-boned nurse who kept Camille grounded when it was Taylor in a hospital bed. Rose and Joe and their daughter, Rebecca and Patrick, and several people from church. Deb was at home with Paige, but her husband was there. Jen Covington too. She came shortly after Marcus. She came with her husband, Nick, and she looked fit. It was an odd thing for Camille to notice. But she did.
They all made for an interesting sight, with half of them covered in colored cornstarch and a few dressed in tutus.
Camille clutched Neil’s hand like a life raft, staring hard at his thumbnail. The lunula on his thumbnail—that white half circle she noticed when he was a nervous TA and she was a homesick freshman and they never ever would have guessed that one day they’d be here.
She looked down the line of chairs.
Taylor’s hand in Darius’s hand.
Anaya’s hand in Marcus’s hand.
Edison’s hand in Tamika’s hand.
All of them with lunula too.
A doctor walked out into the waiting room.
Camille and Neil stood at the same time. They joined the man in the white coat right in front of the hallway, Camille’s heart in her throat.
Taylor was standing, but she didn’t join them. She stood there like a frozen doe after the cock of a rifle.
“Your son came out of surgery just fine.”
Neil grabbed Camille’s elbow.
“We were able to stop the bleeding. The bullet got his gall bladder, so we went ahead and removed it. I’m not sure how, but every other major organ is intact. He’s in stable condition, and you’ll be able to see him soon.”
Camille’s entire body convulsed.
A sob tore up her throat.
She turned and looked at Taylor. Her face crumpled. She cupped her mouth and nodded as Taylor hurried over.
“He’s okay. He’s going to be okay.”
The three of them fell into a hug.
Neil’s shoulders shook. They chugged like the engine of a freight train as he held up his wife and his daughter.
Seventy-Two
Two thin purple veins intersected on Austin’s left eyelid. Camille studied them, watching him like she had when he was a baby. She had a hard time leaving his bedside, even now when he was out of rocky waters. Tomorrow or the next day he would be ready to come home. They would have a lot to bring with them—cards and flowers and picture after picture from his little sister, Paige, who thankfully had been spared the whole traumatic ordeal.
She was playing with Faith in the colored foam when it happened. Later, Camille learned that Neil got the two girls out of there immediately, as soon as he heard about a shooter. Then he spent the next twenty minutes calling Camille and Taylor and Austin, over and over again, losing his mind—until Taylor called him and told him the kind of news no father ever wanted to hear.
Paige didn’t find out what happened to Austin until after he came out of surgery. By then, the scariness had taken on an air of intrigue. Camille’s beautiful, eight-year-old girl had been spared nightmares. But not Taylor. And not Camille. For the rest of their lives, they would be able to conjure the image with astounding clarity at the drop of a hat—Austin, lying in the grass, covered in blood. Another one of those snapshot photographs.
But praise the Lord, it wasn’t the last image they would have of him. Praise the Lord, for He had spared her son.
“Knock, knock,” someone said.
It was Anaya Jones. She stood hesitantly in the doorway of Austin’s hospital room, holding a collection of brightly colored balloons and a black teddy bear with a sign that said Get Well Soon.
Camille joined her out in the hall.
“I wanted to come earlier, but I kept getting sidetracked with all the end-of-the-year craziness.”
Camille cupped her forehead. The end of the school year. Over the past few days, she’d lost track of time completely. It could be Christmas and she’d be none the wiser. “I didn’t get you anything.”
“What?”
“For the end of the school year. Paige didn’t get you anything.”
Anaya waved her hand. “You have much more important things to worry about right now.”
Still. She would have liked to get her something.
Camille motioned toward the bench by the wall. “Do you want to sit?”
“Sure. I have a minute.” She set the balloons and the teddy bear on the shiny, white linoleum and the two women sat shoulder to shoulder as a nurse walked down the hallway. She smiled at them as she passed.
“I met your mother in the cafeteria the other day,” Camille said.
“Oh.”
“She’s lovely. You look a lot like her.”
“My dad used to say I was her little twin.”
Used to say.
She wondered why he stopped.
She wondered if he was dead.
She wondered if she should tell Anaya what she knew.
Bennett was aiming for Darius.
He told Kathleen later that he wasn’t going to shoot anyone. He was overcome with anger because he had to go to Lakemont in the fall. So he took the gun Camille had purchased to protect herself and her children from a burglar. The one her neighbors assumed was Darius.
But it wasn’t a burglar who hurt Austin. It wasn’t a transfer student from South Fork. It was her best friend’s son—with Camille’s own weapon.
She shuddered every time she thought about it, how close she came to losing him.
Bennett wasn’t arrested.
He was a twelve-year-old kid with an anger problem. A twelve-year-old kid who made a really impulsive, foolish choice in the midst of that anger. Camille couldn’t help but wonder if Bennett would have received the same amount of grace had he looked more like the boy he was aiming at.
The thought taunted her. And yet she couldn’t escape it.
As much as she wished it weren’t true, as much as she wished she had the confidence to say the same thing she said in the town meeting back in July—this has nothing to do with skin color!—she just wasn’t sure anymore. How could she be, with all those photographs from this past year in her head? Darius on her front lawn, with his arms raised, when Cody had wandered around her front yard plenty of times without ever having the cops called on him. Chris, the nice man who changed her tire, with his hands up in the rain. The fear she felt the second she saw him walking toward her and what that fear almost drove her to do.
It’s about trash, Leif Royce had yelled.
God forgive her, Camille had been annoyed. Not because his words might have wounded real, live people in that gymnasium. But because his words reflected poorly on her. She didn’t give the people a second thought.
Paige, I don’t care about skin color. It’s what’s in a person’s heart that matters.
Maybe that ought to be true, but was it how the world worked?
But Mommy, all of them have brown skin.
Camille closed her eyes against an onslaught of emotion. Another blinding flash of vulnerability—naked and needy, with no clue which way was up anymore—and an overwhelming desire to beg for forgiveness. It was the same urge she had with Jen Covington in her office, and the same urge she kept experiencing at random moments with Neil.
Only this time, she didn’t resist it.
Camille grabbed Anaya’s hand.
Anaya’s eyes went wide, slightly alarmed.
“I’m so sorry,” Camille said. “I’m sorry for everything.”
It wasn’t enough—not even close—but maybe it was a good place to start.
Seventy-Three
The house felt large and foreign as she stepped inside, her arms laden with too much stuff. Over the past week, she’d been sleeping on a cot in Austin’s hospital room. Neil stayed at home with Taylor and Paige. This afternoon, Austin was bei
ng discharged.
They wanted to set up a temporary room in the small office off the foyer so he wouldn’t have to climb the staircase right away. So Neil rolled the trundle from the laundry room while Camille walked upstairs to deposit all the cards and the plants and the balloons.
Austin especially liked the plants.
She set them on his windowsill in the sunlight, where he kept a small collection of geodes. One was a gift from Kathleen, something she saw at a gift shop when she and Rick went to Branson last spring.
Rose called earlier today.
Bennett had started mandatory counseling, and the Malones put their house up for sale. They were moving to Minnesota to be closer to Rick’s family. They were hoping it could happen as quickly as possible.
“Rebecca said Kathleen wants to call you,” Rose had said. “But she isn’t sure what to say.”
Camille didn’t know how to respond to that. In truth, there was nothing Kathleen could say. In truth, it seemed it might be best for the Malones to move, and their families to move on.
It was strange, after all they’d been through together. Baseball and swimming lessons and camping trips and beach vacations and Bible study and, of course, every single one of the Crystal Ridge Memorial Day 5Ks. They’d been friends since Cody and Taylor were in kindergarten and first grade. They potty-trained Bennett and Austin together. For years, the screen saver on Camille’s laptop had been a picture of both boys standing side by side in Kathleen’s backyard, their bare butts exposed for all the world to see as they peed in the green grass. Taylor and Cody were in the picture too, and they were laughing hysterically. Kathleen and Camille used to dream that one day, those laughing children would get married. They never ever imagined that one day, the little boy on the left would shoot the little boy on the right.
Kathleen and Camille had been friends—best friends. The Malone family wasn’t a threat. Those transfer students were the threat, and together, they worked hard to keep them out.
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